Are killer whales persons?

Of course if we redefine the word "person" to mean something else, orcas can be considered "persons". We can even redefine it in such a way that a chair will be considered a "person" - but should we?

And if, as it currently stands, we have many different definitions, and are not even sure what the word means - of course we will not be sure whether orca is or is not it.

It's the same as with the debate of whether computers can be "conscious". A word is just a label, if nobody clearly understands what it means - conversation about whether or not something can be described by it is pointless.

Having said that, aside from the clickbaity title, article is pretty cool and interesting.

Edit:

Haha, I can't help but imagine that in 30 years human ethics will take another leap, orcas will be deemed sentient, and I will be denied some high status job for such an ignorant and speciest comment. And I'll have to give some apologetic speech "I deeply regret that I held such unenlightened beliefs, I profoundly apologize to the orca rights community, but I'd like to state for the record that I had a horrible day, and did not mean at all to offend the feelings of this oppressed minority by comparing them to furniture." And then the orca judge will sentence me to 10 years of eating algae of shame or something(a proper punishment as their sophisticated culture requires).

There have many documented cases of dolphins rescuing drowning human swimmers or protecting surfers from sharks. I feel like it takes a good amount of intelligence and empathy-like qualities for dolphins to be able to recognize the peril of a human creature--foreign to their natural environment--and decide to treat him as one of their own where there is no obvious benefit for the dolphin.

My opinion is that we should give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to personhood.

EDIT: This video of killer whales is also perplexing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWsN63PRCW8

A group of killer whales beach themselves to grab some sea lion pups for lunch, then proceed to toss them around and eat them. There was one seal they decided not to eat so one of the killer whales beached himself again in order to release it safely on land. It really does feel like there's complex mind behind this behavior.

Though different whale and dolphin species have exhibited what one could call empathy, theirs is a completely different world from ours and we shouldn't apply our values to them.

[1] http://blog.seattlepi.com/candacewhiting/2014/12/01/humpback...

That line of argument is based on the idea that the rights of an individual are based on the intelligence or capability of the individual. That shouldn't be the case -- if a human being has a impaired intellectual capacity, or no social relationships, that's not grounds for abridging their rights.

Oh, you just ate another sentient animal? Locked up in a zoo for the rest of your life.

So although I believe that we should treat certain animals as if they had certain rights, I don't think we should approach the topic in the same way we think of human rights. If animal have rights, they will be very different kinds of rights than what we are used to. There may also be equally large differences between different species. Orcas are just as different from dogs, if not more, as dogs are from us.

Even the right to life, possibly the most fundamental of human rights, takes on a completely different meaning when another animal claims the right to eat you. And perhaps if we think hard enough along these lines, we might also get some fresh insights about the ethics of human meat-eating.

Not directly related to the personhood question, but for me it was the highlight.

Uhm... Usually that implies something paranormal. I assume what the author meant was sonar, which is somewhat less bogglesome.

That said, I get some very strange vibes from the way this article is written, especially give the subtitle that humans may not be superior. Some choice quotes:

>> Orcas, with their big brains, complex social structures, mysterious communications, and mind-boggling sixth sense, by their very existence, challenge the long-standing belief that human beings are the planet’s only intelligent occupants

"by their very existence, challenge the long-standing belief"... really? Why are any of these a true measure of intelligence?

>> Social life for killer whales, as we have seen, is deeper and more omnipresent than it is for humans

This is supposition, at best.

>> If orcas have established empathy as a distinctive evolutionary advantage, it might behoove a human race awash in war and psychopathy to pay attention.

Let's just ignore the way they can turn on one another and fight against other pods. Not to mention the truly brutal ways they hunt other species. So they show what we perceive as empathy. Let's apply that idea across all Orcas as if it were a rule, and then compare it to the worst humans in existence. Great.

>> The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child

This is used as supporting proof, but when read by itself seems more like someone pointing out the obvious flaw of anthropomorphizing the actions of animals.

>> The “social cognition” that arises from this kind of richly shared experience of the world would even lead to a different sense of self than humans experience [...] The communal experience might actually change the boundaries of the self to include several individuals [...] This clearly indicates that dolphins—and particularly killer whales [...] have powerful emotional and empathic connection

So we're jumping from 'could and might' to saying the evidence 'clearly indicates' something?

I'm not trying to be overly negative, this article just strikes me as someone who is trying to twist what we know to suit their own agenda.

Seeing animals behaving as traders as in "this is mine, this is yours, I'll trade you mine for yours."

Seeing an animal contemplate art.

Seeing animals having a conversation.

Perhaps all of these have been observed, but if so we need to be more aware of them.

Edit

One more:

Saving and passing on records of previous events

I understand if articles might have clickbait titles, but can we give a more reasonable title on HN? Even the second part of the article title, "The more we learn about orcas, the more our assumption of innate superiority looks like a presumption" would've been more effective.

According to the definition, a "person" refers to a human [0][1]. Perhaps the better question is should we treat the whales better or differently based on what we learned rather than shoe-horn them into a word that literally means human.

[0] Oxford English: "A human being regarded as an individual" [1] Merriam-Webster: "a human being"